The Royal Navy Discussions and Updates

[jaffo4011]

the whole thing makes the decision to sell off the harrier fleet a total farce and was one of the 'pay offs' for the govt's decision to move to the c varient......

if we now go back to the b version,then we should have retained the harriers for early use on qe and pow......

this govt has been a total shower with its handling of defence,staff and even the latest ill thought out dabbling with the british police....all very poor thinking driven by imaginary cost savings.

 

[Hambo]

There needs to be a new debate about what we actually want the carriers to do, and one not driven by party politics and short sighted budget reason. The notion of "carrier strike" needs to be considered in terms of what we can afford, or rather what we are prepared to pay.

The original Harrier purchase was designed to provide limited ability to ward off MPAs as part of the ASW group. The right war came along at the right time but that didn't mask the lack of range of the Harrier, and the fact that in small numbers, with no proper AEW ships were still getting hit.

Now if we repeat that with a dozen shortish range F35B on deck, with a shrinking amount of escorts, we will be able to achieve a limited CAP, just, and the ability to put a small numbers of JDAM type weapons on target, as long as we don't mind putting the ship within 400 miles of danger. That for all of £6 billion or so.

Ski jump means limited UCAV option, or complicated EMCAT or arrestor wires, a bodge job in essence. It means helo AEW. F35B means we can add to coalition missions, but possibly means we support the USMC amphibious effort whilst other nations F35A's with tanker support get to do the real legwork.

If we really want carrier strike, it mean F35C in numbers (which can be built up over decades) and a long range UCAV such as X47, as even the USN doesn't think it's wise to get within 1000 miles of a sophisticated enemy, so they are also looking at something more than the 700 mile range C. If we can't pay for that, then stop kidding ourselves and call them sea control vessels or surface fleet air defence ships and put a token CAP on the deck and rely on the RAF with the Taranis child to provide long range strike.

We were all dazzled by the thought of big carriers but in the age of 2.something of GDP spent on defence we probably can't afford them. We have clueless politicians who's desire to be world statesmen led us into costly conflicts for little gain added to inept Generals, Air-marshalls and Admirals who were too busy bickering rather than form a united front against the politicians. Oh and add a defence industry so dominant over our Government that they can charge pretty much what they want and we get where we are

 

[kev 99]

If the French can afford a carrier strike capability there's no reason why we shouldn't, the problem is that the French managed to tough out the political flak and get on with it, it looks like we might succumb to budgetry pressure, in-service rivalry and party politics.

 

[Hambo]

What would it really cost?

The Grade A option is 2 x 36 F35C airgroups.

£9 Billion for both carriers plus conversion to cat and trap (much already paid for)

72 plus OCU of 8 plus 10 attrition reserves so 90 F35C? The costs? who knows but supposedly they are more expensive at the start so £130m each for the first 20? £100m each for the next 70 so £9.6 billion?? Joint RN/RAF ownership and crewing.

We already have AEW Sea kings so no more needed.
Each ship based on what we got from the Invincible class gives 140 sea days a year. There is no need to base more than a dozen on board at any time to keep the training schedule for take offs and landings up, run yearly or bi-yearly exercises where the surge of 36 per ship is achieved. We will not be in a position to forward deploy a ship based on a class of 2 , nor the need unlike the USN. They are kept as the big stick, waved now and then.

So for 80 days of the year we have no carrier at sea, all F35C's are training, QRA etc. For the rest of the year, one carrier may be at sea, joint training ops, good will tours with the occasional exercise thrown in, so 60 F35C's available for training, maintenance, overseas deployments etc.

If there is a conflict that HNS alone can't manage, we work up the ready carrier within a few weeks to full fat configuration, 36 F35C's would be no mean force, a couple of T45, Type 26's and a couple of Astutes, thats it, that UK PLC maxed out. But not bad?

So 107 Typhoon, 90 F35C in total, plenty to share around, not many needed at sea at any one time. All for the small sum of £18 billion of loose change, spent over the next 15-20 years, is that really too much for the 5 th biggest economy in the world?

 

[StobieWan]

On a side note, if the Scottish vote for independence in 2014, is there a plan B to build the POW in English, welsh or N.I yards, being at the Socialist Republic of Scotland will have no use for it and therefore but for a small bit of compensation for taxes already spent, shouldn't benefit from the work?

I don't think the carriers can be assembled any other yard than Rosyth, short of reviving H&W in Belfast at stupendous cost, but once floating, the remainder of the fitting out work could be transferred south quite easily I expect.

Can't see any point in propping up the Salmond Socialist Workers party.

 

[Hambo]

If the French can afford a carrier strike capability there's no reason why we shouldn't, the problem is that the French managed to tough out the political flak and get on with it, it looks like we might succumb to budgetry pressure, in-service rivalry and party politics.

I would agree that the French have done well to afford what they do, but with no sign of a second ship, they will face a gap, although I would put up with that just to be in the strike carrier game right now. in hindsight the French have been proved right in some respects. We joined a collaboration for Typhoon with each nation putting conflicting needs, or refusing to pay for some aspects. The French went multirole in the M2000 series, whilst we went with the GR3 and a pretty poor F2/3 Tornado. The french won a host of export orders for M2000 and have pulled through that multirole delta technology into Rafale which is arguably more exportable than Typhoon, and in A2A when both get Aesa and Meteor, there won't be much to choose between them.

So comparing the vast amounts of money spent , they got better value for money acting alone than we did with our partners. Projects such as Typhoon ate so much of the pie that we have seen capability cut after capability cut.

Come 2025 I would rather the UK had F35 than Rafale, the capabilities of stealth takes us to a new level, but there is much we could learn from the French, I think they have played the long game far better. Use home grown goods, skip the merchandising blurb and vast cost of the Lockheed Martin project to dominate the world market and wait until the French stealth/UCAV capabilities mature. Meanwhile they keep a healthily sized airforce and Navy, where as we cut and cut and cut to pay for a hoped for end product, the price of which or the timescale for delivery keeps slipping. Lets be honest, if this government could do, they would have scrapped the carriers by now.

 

[kev 99]

I agree with all of that.

Unfortunately the Government (whatever colour) seems very keen on us not forking out on capital expenditure which rather forces us to spend more in the long term, the FSTA deal is a perfect example.

I can think of ships and aircraft going in to service with capabilities missing, to be added at a later date or removed altogether and replaced, all means more cost in the long term.

 

[swerve]

doesn't the stovl variant damage the carrier surface everytime it lands because of too much heat.

No, it does not.

 

[swerve]

Also only got a 80nm range improved combat radiance over a Harrier GR9, when you factor in the Harriers drop tanks as well it's probably around the same.

No problem putting drop tanks on an F-35.

 

[Neutral Zone]

I can think of ships and aircraft going in to service with capabilities missing, to be added at a later date or removed altogether and replaced, all means more cost in the long term.

Sadly that's a mentality that afflicts the entire public sector in the UK, I'm from Newry in Northern Ireland that lies on the main road from Belfast to Dublin and was a notorious bottleneck. In the early 90's Newry got a badly needed bypass but in order to save money it was just single carriageway, 10 years later it was dualled as part of a bigger scheme for a far greater capital cost than had they just done it properly in the first place!

I work as a civil servant and I've come across numerous similar examples, personally I think the root cause is that The Treasury is too big and powerful within Government and is obsessed with short term cost control. This means that projects only get approved if they are stripped to the bone in cost terms which means things that they really should have are removed to appease the bean counters. The only solution I think is to split The Treasury in two adopting the model the Canadian federal government uses of a Department of Finance to manage taxation and economic policy and a Treasury Board to control spending allocation and audit. Unforntunately as Chancellor of the Exchequer is such a powerful post this will likely never happen.

 

[kev 99]

No problem putting drop tanks on an F-35.

Well yes, but it does rather negate the stealth advantage, not always necessary I know.

 

[kev 99]

Sadly that's a mentality that afflicts the entire public sector in the UK, I'm from Newry in Northern Ireland that lies on the main road from Belfast to Dublin and was a notorious bottleneck. In the early 90's Newry got a badly needed bypass but in order to save money it was just single carriageway, 10 years later it was dualled as part of a bigger scheme for a far greater capital cost than had they just done it properly in the first place!

I work as a civil servant and I've come across numerous similar examples, personally I think the root cause is that The Treasury is too big and powerful within Government and is obsessed with short term cost control. This means that projects only get approved if they are stripped to the bone in cost terms which means things that they really should have are removed to appease the bean counters. The only solution I think is to split The Treasury in two adopting the model the Canadian federal government uses of a Department of Finance to manage taxation and economic policy and a Treasury Board to control spending allocation and audit. Unforntunately as Chancellor of the Exchequer is such a powerful post this will likely never happen.

Agree, but we're in danger of going off piste here.

 

[Hambo]

I agree with all of that.

Unfortunately the Government (whatever colour) seems very keen on us not forking out on capital expenditure which rather forces us to spend more in the long term, the FSTA deal is a perfect example.

I can think of ships and aircraft going in to service with capabilities missing, to be added at a later date or removed altogether and replaced, all means more cost in the long term.

Off topic, but as the FSTA is the ultimate example of stupidity. Being a bit sad , I found on google a site called globalplanesearch.com . Fancy a 2011 plate Airbus A330-200? Yours for $115million, a 2005 plate ex-singapore airline A340-500? Yours for $60million (9000 mile range, direct flights from UK to MPA, that would annoy them).

The worlds airline business is struggling, plenty of perfectly good airframes with decades use left out there. We could buy some at rock bottom prices, store and convert as needed or maybe we could enter into a complex and vastly expensive PFI deal that locks us into a penalty laden straightjacket. There are also L-1011s still available, the same planes Marshall's wanted to convert to boost the Trident fleet.

Or perhaps just buy some hose and drogue kits for the A400M that we are buying (at ever increasing cost and delay), the same kits made in the UK. No that would be daft!

 

[jaffo4011]

I would agree that the French have done well to afford what they do, but with no sign of a second ship, they will face a gap, although I would put up with that just to be in the strike carrier game right now. in hindsight the French have been proved right in some respects. We joined a collaboration for Typhoon with each nation putting conflicting needs, or refusing to pay for some aspects. The French went multirole in the M2000 series, whilst we went with the GR3 and a pretty poor F2/3 Tornado. The french won a host of export orders for M2000 and have pulled through that multirole delta technology into Rafale which is arguably more exportable than Typhoon, and in A2A when both get Aesa and Meteor, there won't be much to choose between them.

So comparing the vast amounts of money spent , they got better value for money acting alone than we did with our partners. Projects such as Typhoon ate so much of the pie that we have seen capability cut after capability cut.

Come 2025 I would rather the UK had F35 than Rafale, the capabilities of stealth takes us to a new level, but there is much we could learn from the French, I think they have played the long game far better. Use home grown goods, skip the merchandising blurb and vast cost of the Lockheed Martin project to dominate the world market and wait until the French stealth/UCAV capabilities mature. Meanwhile they keep a healthily sized airforce and Navy, where as we cut and cut and cut to pay for a hoped for end product, the price of which or the timescale for delivery keeps slipping. Lets be honest, if this government could do, they would have scrapped the carriers by now.

you have to admire the french for their single minded determination to succeed independently unlike the nation of 'value based,handwringing apologists that we have become....

i read an article on the development of the eap by bae and its such a shame that we hadnt just developed it as a purely british product..the typhoon it eventuly spawned into is superb but would have been done a lot quicker,im sure,if developed by a single maker.......having said that,the british shopkeeper mentality would have tried to cut costs so much that it would probably been cancelled prior to completion ala tsr2.....

as an aside,the tornado f3 developed into probably the perfect aircraft for its original role...a heavilly armed low level,big radared interceptor for dealing with massed raids of low level soviets........just because the trend later developed into highly manoeverable agile medium level fighters shouldnt detract from that....

funny tho,that apologists for the less agile f35 etc,seem to be advocating the bvr approach/long range missile approach,now the agile europeans/russians are on the market....perhaps the tornado f3's missile carrier profile wasnt such a bad idea afterall.

 

[Hambo]

you have to admire the french for their single minded determination to succeed independently unlike the nation of 'value based,handwringing apologists that we have become....

i read an article on the development of the eap by bae and its such a shame that we hadnt just developed it as a purely british product..the typhoon it eventuly spawned into is superb but would have been done a lot quicker,im sure,if developed by a single maker.......having said that,the british shopkeeper mentality would have tried to cut costs so much that it would probably been cancelled prior to completion ala tsr2.....

as an aside,the tornado f3 developed into probably the perfect aircraft for its original role...a heavilly armed low level,big radared interceptor for dealing with massed raids of low level soviets........just because the trend later developed into highly manoeverable agile medium level fighters shouldnt detract from that....

funny tho,that apologists for the less agile f35 etc,seem to be advocating the bvr approach/long range missile approach,now the agile europeans/russians are on the market....perhaps the tornado f3's missile carrier profile wasnt such a bad idea afterall.

In my opinion the Phantom was perfectly capable of shooting down Soviet Bombers over the north sea and when the F4J(UK) was acquired post Falklands, the UK finally had the Phantom it should have purchased ie simple and as cheap as possible, we could have purchased more, the F4J retired in 1991, the entire Phantom fleet could have lasted to 2000 or a little beyond. The Germans fitted new radar and AMRAAM to theirs, so we could have added JTIDS and other goodies to ours. Tornado ADV was a dog, typically us brits like to try and justify mediocrity.

With an in service aim for late 1990s- 2000ish, you are right the P-110/or EAP derivative could have become the UK's F18-alike, as much A2G as A2A, who knows, like the F18, it could have been stressed for carrier operation from the start. Utilise Blue Vixen for instance. We would have an agile plane, in the right era, with multi role, using a lot of the technology that eventually shows up in typhoon. Then we let our own stealth technology demonstrators mature (replica etc) and the UK produces a home grown F35 alternative around 2025.

The F35 is in the F16 class of agility, no slouch and can fly clean. But again, there is an airforce thread for this kind of stuff.

 

[1805]

you have to admire the french for their single minded determination to succeed independently unlike the nation of 'value based,handwringing apologists that we have become....

i read an article on the development of the eap by bae and its such a shame that we hadnt just developed it as a purely british product..the typhoon it eventuly spawned into is superb but would have been done a lot quicker,im sure,if developed by a single maker.......having said that,the british shopkeeper mentality would have tried to cut costs so much that it would probably been cancelled prior to completion ala tsr2.....

as an aside,the tornado f3 developed into probably the perfect aircraft for its original role...a heavilly armed low level,big radared interceptor for dealing with massed raids of low level soviets........just because the trend later developed into highly manoeverable agile medium level fighters shouldnt detract from that....

funny tho,that apologists for the less agile f35 etc,seem to be advocating the bvr approach/long range missile approach,now the agile europeans/russians are on the market....perhaps the tornado f3's missile carrier profile wasnt such a bad idea afterall.

The French do seem to follow a very difference strategy, they certainly do have their fair share of problems, the CDG prehaps even rivalling the CVFs in prolonged/delayed build?

Maybe I'm not close enough, but there seems to more of a joined up approach between: defence chiefs, politicans, and industry. Sometime it looks like they are more focused on building long term industrial capability, than the specific performance of individual systems, I don't think that means they accept inadequate equipment, although you couldn't compare a RN v NM SSN....but then if you throw in SSBN a more difficult debate...not as good but independent and French...

There does seem to be focus on core areas and then buy off the shelf best in class aka Hawkeye E2, when it's not core.

All a bit "hare and tortiose"?

 

[Neutral Zone]

The French do seem to follow a very difference strategy, they certainly do have their fair share of problems, the CDG prehaps even rivalling the CVFs in prolonged/delayed build?

Maybe I'm not close enough, but there seems to more of a joined up approach between: defence chiefs, politicans, and industry. Sometime it looks like they are more focused on building long term industrial capability, than the specific performance of individual systems, I don't think that means they accept inadequate equipment, although you couldn't compare a RN v NM SSN....but then if you throw in SSBN a more difficult debate...not as good but independent and French...

There does seem to be focus on core areas and then buy off the shelf best in class aka Hawkeye E2, when it's not core.

All a bit "hare and tortiose"?

The French are just better at administration and management, they also seem to have a clear idea as to what role they want to play in the World, something that is shared by politicians on the right and on the left. They also know that you have to spend money in order to make it, compare the amount of development effort going into Rafale with that on Typhoon. They also put their own national interests first, in contrast we've spent the last 50 odd years getting involved in collaborations to try and show that we're " Good Europeans" that have meant that aircraft like the Tornado and Typhoon have been hampered by having to meet a wide range of requirements and there's the classic British mentality of trying to do things on the cheap which just costs us more in the long run. The French have had their share of procurement cock ups but they've stuck with their basic plan, until a year ago the CdG was seen as a joke, who's laughing now?

I am going seriously off topic here! hwell

 

[RobWilliams]

The French are just better at administration and management, they also seem to have a clear idea as to what role they want to play in the World, something that is shared by politicians on the right and on the left. They also know that you have to spend money in order to make it, compare the amount of development effort going into Rafale with that on Typhoon. They also put their own national interests first, in contrast we've spent the last 50 odd years getting involved in collaborations to try and show that we're " Good Europeans" that have meant that aircraft like the Tornado and Typhoon have been hampered by having to meet a wide range of requirements and there's the classic British mentality of trying to do things on the cheap which just costs us more in the long run. The French have had their share of procurement cock ups but they've stuck with their basic plan, until a year ago the CdG was seen as a joke, who's laughing now?

I am going seriously off topic here! hwell

Feel free to revitalise the MN thread on here

 

[StobieWan]

Right, back on Royal Navy matters, someone clue me in on what the plan is for Type 23 to get Artisan and Sea Ceptor - I read recently that SeaWolf is out of service in 2016 - is that correct? We've just heard that MBDA has a four year development contract for SeaCeptor - I'm guessing it must be fairly well developed by now if anyone's meeting that deadline.

So, is there a schedule or a rough guide as to how this all happens and when the last of the 23's will be fitted with the FLAADS ?

 

[Hambo]

Right, back on Royal Navy matters, someone clue me in on what the plan is for Type 23 to get Artisan and Sea Ceptor - I read recently that SeaWolf is out of service in 2016 - is that correct? We've just heard that MBDA has a four year development contract for SeaCeptor - I'm guessing it must be fairly well developed by now if anyone's meeting that deadline.

So, is there a schedule or a rough guide as to how this all happens and when the last of the 23's will be fitted with the FLAADS ?

From the RN website,
"After being fitted to the 13 Type 23s in service (the oldest, Argyll, will serve until around 2023, the youngest, St Albans, until 2036), Sea Ceptor will be installed on the Type 26s, replacement for the 23s, which begin to join the Fleet at the beginning of the next decade."

I would think Argyle must be one of the first, as 2016-2023 only gives 7 years max, hardly worth doing for less time in service?